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Overcoming Pricing Insecurities and Raising Your Freelancing Rates

I stumbled across this on Instagram:

“Every Monday I send out invoices and ever since I raised my rates, Mondays have also become absolutely the hardest part of my week. As much as I love money, ASKING for money from the clients that I have actually provided something of value to makes me really uncomfortable.”

Ain’t that the truth.

At first, it just feels weird.

And, there’s all these insecurities around, “Am I worth it? Do my clients feel like they’re getting their money’s worth? Are they eventually just going to drop me, because they feel like they’re getting screwed?”

And, on and on.

Stops a lot of freelancers from even raising rates in the first place.

And, of course, then you feel undervalued. Like you’re putting in all these hours, but not making what you deserve. You get overworked and burned out. But, you feel stuck to raise rates.

It can be a real nightmare.

A lot just quit at this point.

But, one of the comments on this post got it right:

“People pay for great service. Whether it’s at a restaurant, salon, or a workout trainer, if your service is good then you will and should be compensated for it. Don’t feel guilty sweetie.”

^^Truth.

My little brother brags talks about his $45 steak moment.

For me, it was a $300 microphone (let me pause for a second to flex).

People WILL pay for great products and services.

Actually, I remember the first time I raised my rates.

There was this one guy, in particular. His reaction threw me for a loop. Because, he didn’t react. He just sorta went, “Oh okay. I wondered when you were gonna raise your prices.” And said, “Sounds good.”

I was just like… “Well, that was easy.”

And, what it made me realize is we are a lot more emotionally attached to our pricing than our clients are. To them, it’s a lot more of a black and white “worth it, not worth it” thing.

And, when you get good at pricing accurately…

You’ll feel a lot less guilty.

And, a lot less uncomfortable raising rates.

And, you can actually get paid what you deserve.

Without all the emotional baggage.

So, that’s the trick.

Think of it less in terms of what you’re “worth” and more in terms of “what is an objectively accurate fee to charge for the particular service I’m providing.” Which, yeah, sounds like something Poindexter would say.

But, it’s true.

And then, it’s just about being accurate with that objective assessment.

Of course, pricing accuracy is one of the hardest things to do.

Clients and developers are notoriously bad at it.

One of the things I’ve learned in over 14 years of doing this is that accurate pricing is a process. And, it differs from market to market and service to service. But, when you learn and use the process…

You can be confident in your pricing.

Know you’re charging reasonable rates.

Know when to raise rates.

And, not get bogged down by all those insecurities.

In any case, I show you the process I learned in Lesson 9 of Module 3 of my Upwork 101 course. Fair warning. This isn’t some gimmick or magic “trick” that suddenly makes everything awesome.

It takes research.

Something a lot wannabe freelancers refuse to do.

But, the ones who do have their eyes opened.

And, tend to have a lot more success.

Anyway, you can get access to that Upwork 101 course for nothing over on SkillShare. As a teacher, I can give you a 2-month, no-cost trial. Take the entire course, cancel any time before the two month is up.